Peyroux's Custom Curtains added 3 new photos.Ready-made curtains on sale 10am-5pm thru Saturday 1/16/16 Silks, Linens, Cottons & Synthetics available ... Many with interlining & black out lining. Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward doveDance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of loveLet me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon Show me slowly what I only know the limits ofDance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of loveDance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us aboveDance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of loveDance me to the children who are asking to be born Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is tornDance me to the end of love

Dance me to the end of loveDance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your gloveDance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of loveYou've made an impossible request. You can start over here.Local Home: Formal, Updated, Comfortable Donna and Robert Taylor’s Metairie home combines dignity with leisure. The comfortable den is wrapped in a neutral-colored envelope. The stately home of Donna and Robert Taylor is a circa-1940 classic Georgian-style house that was completely redone a few years ago. “We both immediately liked the house,” says Donna, because of its classic architecture and the setting on a quiet tree-lined, divided boulevard off Metairie Road. She is sitting in her cheerful breakfast room overlooking a rock waterfall and lush garden with her interior designer Curtis Herring, ASID (Curtis Herring Interior Design).

“We could see that the house had potential, and it took the partnership of working with Curtis to make it the beautiful home it is today.” The Taylors gutted the main rooms at the front of the house and then reconfigured the large formal living room into two spaces. “Now we have a cozy living room and a separate study overlooking the side garden,” she says. weathermate stripe insulated stripe grommet top curtain pairs“As it turns out, the new study is the favorite room in the house for both of us. heythrop curtainsIt has wall-to-ceiling bookcases to accommodate Robert’s extensive collection of books, and it’s the perfect place for me to work at the desk in front of the large window that floods the space with light.”affordable curtains in divisoria

The collaboration of the Taylors with the eye for detail that Herring brought to the project repositioned the home as a gem of the period it was built. “I was careful to recreate and enhance the molding and trim throughout the house,” Herring says with pride. “I was always mindful that Donna and Robert wanted a formal home that was updated and comfortable.” avis curtains enfieldNeil Peyroux, Donna’s brother and owner of Neil Peyroux Custom Curtains, made all of the handsome window coverings in the home, using special high-end fabrics selected by Herring and Donna.curtains unlimited ilford Herring addressed the latest in lighting throughout the house and boldly painted the entire den in an envelope of Benjamin Moore bone white. curtains henleaze

“Painting the dark-stained beams the same color as the rest of the room and designing an entirely new and unique fireplace renewed the character to the large den that adjoins the breakfast room and opens into the kitchen,” he says. Since Robert, the chief financial officer of Superior Energy Service, Inc., is the weekend chef in the Taylors’ home, Donna wanted a large kitchen with plenty of workspace for him and storage for her. chiltern curtains aylesbury“I love the marvelous wall of built-ins that Curtis designed,” she says. “I will never run out of storage space.” Herring adds that he wanted the entire wall to look like a piece of fine furniture. “I even added lighted display shelves with doors covered with bronze grillwork that I ordered from England.” His new design blends perfectly with the Wood-Mode cabinets selected for the kitchen. Upstairs, Curtis created a picture-perfect master suite, even designing a handsome balcony that overlooks the waterfall and pond below.

“It is truly a special retreat for us,” Robert says. Laura, the Taylor’s 17-year-old daughter, who is a junior at Ursuline Academy, also has a handsome new space. The older Taylor children – Colin, 24, and Leslie, 27 – are settled in places of their own. Purchased in 2010, today the 4,400 square foot house is a gem of Georgian-style architecture and a truly unique home. “Our home in Lakeview was seriously flooded by Hurricane Katrina,” Donna says. “When we went shopping for this home, we knew we didn’t want another ‘cookie-cutter’ looking home, and thanks to Curtis everything about this house is beautiful and traditional in a fresh way.”Standing 6-foot-7, bespectacled, bowtie-wearing Thomas Jayne towers above the crowd. In fact, this award-winning decorator has been standing tall professionally for a quarter century—this year marks the 25th anniversary of his design business. In that time, Jayne has become renowned for his deep knowledge of the history of design and for creating spaces that suit modern life.

He has a seemingly effortless ability to make, say, a lacquered Parsons table work with antique Queen Anne-style chairs in a contemporary interior. His impeccable credentials—advanced study at Winterthur and the Met, working at Christie’s and for the legendary Albert Hadley at the firm Parish-Hadley—have never bogged him down in fussiness. He designs for real life, but an elegant version of it. Although he’s based in New York, one of Jayne’s greatest loves is the city of New Orleans, where he and husband Rick Ellis have maintained an apartment for 20 years in a historic 1830s building in the French Quarter. The city is many things to Jayne: a hothouse of creative ferment, a practical shopping destination, a social hub, and a place to do the serious business of design. “We find elements here for every interior we do, whether it’s from the auction houses or antique dealers or someone making stationery,” he says.Tag along as Traditional Home joins Jayne on one of his typical whirlwind days in the Big Easy, a day that combines all of his interests—and a few surprises. 

8a.m. Jayne begins the day deep in the well-preserved precinct of the French Quarter. Not surprisingly, his apartment boasts great antiques—like a daybed once used by the Duke of Windsor. In the living room, there’s also hand-painted wallpaper depicting a panoramic view of the Mississippi Delta, complete with boats and human figures. The Delta’s allure captured the hearts of both Jayne and Ellis, a noted food stylist, when they visited for a Southern food conference in the early 1990s. “We bought this apartment in an extremely important structure for the price of a parking spot in New York—and for a fraction of the cost of something in almost every historic neighborhood in the country,” says Jayne, who manages a stay here about every six weeks. The building is the smallest Creole townhouse in the French Quarter, but it’s the perfect fit for them, says Jayne, as he tops off his look for the day with a jaunty porkpie hat that was made locally. 8:30a.m. First he grabs a latte across the street at Spitfire Coffee, which looks like it would fit well in Brooklyn.

“It’s a great example of how the Quarter is becoming less of a T-shirt shop place,” Jayne says. He heads down a few blocks to the banks of the mighty Mississippi, just as a long and noisy freight train lumbers by. The mix of old and new energizes Jayne. “New Orleans is not frozen in time,” he says. “Here there’s perspective on the past, but they are interested in the future. It’s not perfect, but at least it’s real.”9:15a.m. Jayne dashes into Peter Patout’s small shop just a few blocks away in the Quarter, and he looks like a kid in a candy store. He spies an 18th-century porcelain cooler, which once made a treat that was a predecessor to ice cream, and clutches it tight: “I wish I owned this!” Patout, a Louisiana native renowned for his expertise on Southern antiques, has become something of an ambassador for the city. “He’s a tastemaker,” says Jayne, who bought a 19th-century Louisiana bookcase for his apartment from Patout. Vogue writer Julia Reed  became a Patout disciple after staying in the 1820s guest cottage tucked behind the dealer’s back courtyard.

“People stay with him and they get the bug,” says Jayne, who met the same fate. “He’s a great storyteller.” 9:30a.m. Mixing business and pleasure is in the DNA of New Orleans, and so Jayne often finds himself buying from his friend Nadine Blake, whose quirky, eponymous shop has all manner of merchandise, from pillows to pajamas to books. “This isn’t just a store, but a salon,” Jayne says as Blake greets him with a warm hug. “And it’s an informal gift registry for me too.” Blake carries custom-made cards with sayings from famous authors and others—including Jayne himself. “Historic legend is sometimes more valuable than historic fact” is a quote on one card attributed to the designer. Jayne particularly likes the paintings by local artists, and he pauses by a Naïve-style 19th-century New Orleans street scene by contemporary painter Andrew LaMar Hopkins. “A great work of art reflects a sense of place,” Jayne says. 10:15a.m. As he speeds around the corner to enter the 30,000-square-foot M.S. Rau Antiques, Jayne notes the dealer “has long reigned as the important place for old-line, high-polish antiques.”

The store is stuffed with showstoppers like Empress Carlotta’s grand piano from 1865 ($225,000), a rare Ice Age bear skeleton ($98,500), and an elaborately carved 19th-century Italian exhibition cabinet ($298,500). “I admire the way they supported the community after Katrina,” Jayne says of M.S. Rau’s post-hurricane contributions. He doesn’t make a purchase on this day, but he does get a tour of the “secret room” for VIPs in back, through a hidden door. There, among other things, sits a striking marble bust of Napoleon. The rest we can’t tell you. 10:45a.m. Jayne heads over to one of New Orleans’s most specialized and most attractive shops: the culinarily focused Lucullus, founded by prominent antiques dealer Patrick Dunne and managed by Kerry Moody. It’s bright, airy, and friendly, stuffed with silver, porcelain, glassware, tables, and food-theme artwork. “What Kerry and Patrick have done is make people unafraid of living with antiques,” Jayne says. “My apartment owes them a debt—our great pier mirror came from here, and I have so many of their tablewares.”

Vintage glass from a variety of eras is his favorite thing to pick up here.11:30a.m. Jayne tackles a very fashionable errand next: He wants a new hatband for his porkpie, and so he visits the maker, Meyer the Hatter, a Canal Street landmark since 1894. Navy blue—always classic—does the trick. Jayne tries to shed light on under-appreciated New Orleans assets, so his next stop is the Williams Residence, part of the Historic New Orleans Collection. The gracious 1889 house was owned by the founders of the Collection, Gen. Kemper Williams and Leila Hardie Moore Williams, and decorated in the golds and dusty lilac tones of the mid-20th century. “It doesn’t get played up, but it’s such an important, intact interior—it’s Colonial Revival overlaid with Hollywood Moderne,” Jayne says. “This is all part of my idea of mixing ancient and modern.”Even the go-getting Jayne stops for lunch. He invites Blake to join him at a French Quarter favorite, Café Amelie, known for its hushed courtyard and its crab cakes. 

2p.m. E-mail never sleeps. Jayne stops back home to manage the information flow from his 60 active clients. “A lot of what I do is proactive e-mails to clients about what to expect and problem-solving,” he says. He deals with issues including his chairman role at the Delaware Antiques Show in November; Paris clients who are building a houseboat; questions about which wood will grace a Miami living room ceiling (fir or poplar?); purchases with his art advisers (Etienne Breton for European works and David Henry for American ones); Jayne, the author of two Monacelli Press books—The Finest Rooms in America (2010) and American Decoration (2012)—tries to steal a day a week to write about design and its history.3p.m. Time to leave the Quarter for the Garden District. One of the few people in New Orleans who matches Jayne’s ability to combine disparate items is Ann Koerner, whose shop has the calmly composed aesthetic of a true connoisseur. She has a special insight when it comes to artfully distressed surfaces, which may relate to her work as a painter.

“She buys a lot of great European and American pieces, and she has such a great eye,” says Jayne, who checks out a gleaming Biedermeier desk and a funky piece of contemporary pottery. 4p.m. Directly across the street from Koerner, Jayne ducks into Neal Auction Company, which he has patronized often in the past. The display area is bare since the company has just finished a rash of events, but he asks his contacts about upcoming sales and notes the answer: Their signature three-day extravaganza, the Louisiana Purchase Auction, starts November 20. 5p.m. Jayne is proud to use local workshops in his projects and makes his last stop of the day at Peyroux’s Custom Curtains. Luckily, proprietor Neil Peyroux is prepared for Jayne’s hands-on approach: This is a decorator who knows design from the inside out. Checking up on a local project for a longtime family client, Jayne says, “Generally I come and apply the trim myself. My great mentor, Sister Parish, said, ‘Never deliver curtains untrimmed.’